


we('re) owe(d) the future

by Sharkchimedes



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Mentions of Character Death, Post-Infinity War, lots of headcanons, other additional tags will be added with chapters, richard is not compliant to comics canon, somewhere between canon divergent and non-compliant
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-30
Updated: 2019-07-30
Packaged: 2020-07-26 03:57:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20037541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sharkchimedes/pseuds/Sharkchimedes
Summary: In a post-snap galaxy, Kraglin finds himself rejoining the Ravagers and ending up a mentor to yet another Terran. It's a pretty big step up from exiled-former-first-mate and pseudo-Guardian. This might as well happen, right?





	we('re) owe(d) the future

**Author's Note:**

> this fic was originally inspired by me being sad kraglin wasn't in or mentioned in either infinity war or endgame, and then i decided to write this! this fic will be five chapters, one for each year between IW and EG. As mentioned in the tags, Richard is not comics compliant because I gave him a different backstory! there's also a lot of headcanon material and a few references to other gotg fics ive written but this also fully stands alone so don't worry about that! c:

The last year had been very different. Kraglin had gone decidedly _ down _ in life, in pretty much all areas. He’d started this whole mess as a first mate, and now he was pretty much a glorified babysitter. If this was his punishment for the munity, it seemed about right.

At first, when he’d turned down the Ogord’s offer of reconciliation and return to the _ Starhawk _ , he’d said no, because he honestly had a. still been pretty angry with them, and b. didn’t really think he ought to be on _ anybody’s _ crew now, especially not the one of Yondu’s pseudo-parents. If anyone from the exiled clan had the right to go back, it was Peter. 

And then Peter had gone and ruined his efforts to slink off later and maybe just sit in a corner somewhere and ruminate and stew in his thoughts till he died by giving him the arrow and not letting him out of his sight for the first few days after the whole “Ego-and-etc” mess.

Pete’d even tried to get Kraglin to commit to joining their little team of strays on an official basis, citing that he had the skill to do it and hey, if Mantis could do it, then Kraglin could put aside whatever it was that was bugging him. 

“Nah, I ain't doing that.” Kraglin had shaken his head. Him, a _ guardian _? Not likely. He was an exiled-former-pirate, sure, but still a pirate.

He’d stuck around to keep an eye on Pete, because it’s what Yondu would’ve wanted him to do- and if he was honest, he didn’t trust Pete to take care of himself, and he was the last family he had- and spent most of his time sitting on the _ Quadrant _’s bridge.

(And, of course, Peter didn’t trust him to not just wander off somewhere and die in a gutter if he let him loose. Touche.

They were bound together by mutual ghosts and a mutual lack of self-care. And a sense of family blood that Kraglin wasn’t going to try and untangle with the kid since he was too busy dealing with multiple dead fathers at the moment. )

It had been a job that mostly meant keep track of things on the old ship, and getting the Guardians out of trouble a few times, whether that meant retrieving them or talking down someone he vaguely remembered from his extensive criminal past.

It wasn’t all _ too _ different from what he had been doing for Peter for years.

Except in almost every single way. 

  


And then one day, because if there’s one thing certain about this era of his life, it’s the constant change, it all changes.

The guardians load up into the _ Milano _ and head out, planning to investigate some distress signal. Probably scrape some units off some poor sap who won’t know what hit them till they’re dropped off at some half-decent port. Then they’ll be back, and they’ll be waiting for the next call or world ending catastrophe.

In any case, it means he has the _ Quadrant _ all to himself for a few days. The signal is enough jumps away that getting there and back again, not counting whatever jumps they make to drop the distressed off, is more than a standard mammal can handle. And they’ve all agreed to not try that one again except in _ emergencies only, Rocket. _

Usually, this meant he had time to do whatever things got pushed to the side when they were hosting all of the team, or that people just didn’t like to do. Things like basic maintenance that Kraglin hadn’t really had to do since he was a new recruit on the _ Starhawk, _ but still remembered because when you were a starfarer, you couldn’t ever get too relaxed.

And when that was all done, it meant he could listen to Pete’s music without having to defend himself, make whatever he wanted in the galley, and spend a few cycles cleaning up his own m-ship that was mostly getting ignored in the small hangar. 

The _ Quadrant _ wasn’t a big ship to begin with, and as such only had room for about a handful of m-ships to dock at one time. The most Kraglin was comfortable with at once was three: the one Nebula had taken a few weeks back in her quest to kill Thanos, the _ Milano _ which was currently away, and then the _ Mollymauk. _ It was a sheer fluke she’d survived the destruction of the flagship; he’d only moved her up to that bay _ because _ it was so quiet and it had been when he was so cross with Yondu just seeing the _ Warbird _ in it’s dock was frustrating.

So he listens to the music and makes soup and caf acidic enough to score starship paint, and changes out the _ Mollymauk _’s converters and touches up all her paint. He spends a few hours here and there staring out the viewport and trying to blink away the memory of bodies. He practices getting the arrow to fly straight when there isn’t anyone (Drax) to get it in the shoulder.

The few cycles pass. 

The _ Milano _ doesn’t come back.

It wouldn’t be the first time Pete had been gone longer than planned, or had even forgotten to mention that he would be gone longer to Kraglin, so at first, he doesn’t think much of it. They probably got distracted by something shiny or some distressed galactic citizen awed by the title of Guardian. They’ll still be back by the end of the solar week.

And then they aren’t.

Then things all start happening at once. 

He gets a message to the _ Quadrant _ bearing the Nova signal boost signature, and all it reads is “XANDAR IS GONE.” Then another comes through on the private backchannels mostly used by the Ravagers and their fellow organizations, saying the same of Knowhere.

The reports are scattered at best and full of pieces and holes, but there’s one thing that’s clear: it’s Thanos doing it, and if Xandar and Knowhere are the targets, then it’s the infinity stones come back to haunt the whole galaxy.

And wherever the Guardians went...

He doesn’t think about that much longer. He ignores the fact that no reports have mentioned them at all, and that the _ Milano _ doesn’t pick up when he coms her.

Three days after that Kraglin wakes up with the worst headache he’s ever had and an overwhelming sense of_ wrong wrong wrong WRONG _, stronger than anything he’s ever felt, and it feels like the yaka itself is screaming, and that morning another transmission comes through.

This one bears the _ Starhawk’s _ comm signal, and all it contains is one of the old codes- long recycled by now, but one that Kraglin knows well from his days aboard the Ravager’s flagship- and what that code means is _ come home as fast as possible; danger; death; recall all ships. _ It’s the kind of code that would only be sent out in desperation. 

So Kraglin does what any good Ravager does when called by the_ Starhawk _.

He pops several painkillers and sends back a confirmation code in the same old style, and he gets his ass moving.

He grabs the bag out of his bunk that contains what meager possessions he’s got left (the bag also has everything he salvaged of Yondu’s that didn’t end up on the funeral pyre), and grabs whatever he thinks the guardians would be upset over losing.

Which isn’t all that much, really. It isn’t like he _ knows _ them that well. Just whatever looks like it’s been used the most that isn’t say, a toothbrush.

He does grab everything of Peter’s that he sees, though, because he _ knows _ Pete, and knows it’s better to get a weird look over keeping something the Terran sees as trash than to accidentally discard something he’s been hanging onto since he was a kid. 

(And if “getting whatever is used the most” means Rocket’s tools and projects that look more like space junk than anything else, or Drax’s ‘pad that’s got about fifty trashy holonovels on it, or Groot’s preferred treats, all of Gamora and Mantis’s possesions- because everyone knows that they’ve never had much of anything- then that’s just coincidence. No one can prove anything.)

He stuffs it all into his m-ship, shuts the _ Quadrant _ down to emergency basics and stands on the gangway, looking out over the cramped former rear hanger. If he gets a little watery eyed, it's just the dust.

He’s probably never going to see this ship again. His last tie to the former clan, and he’s dooming it to floating listlessly through space. Soon as the power runs out, he won’t be able to reach it’s beacon, and after that, it’ll be a guessing game of stellar drift and scavenger patterns if he wants to find it again. 

He watches the _ Quadrant _ disappear into the blackness of space between stars far behind him, and hits the button to jump.

\---

The _ Starhawk _ looks- eerie.

Maybe it’s the same sense of _ wrong _ that’s being digging its claws into Kraglin since he woke up, or the jump-sickness he’s feeling from taking all the points from the _ Quadrant _ to get here, or the age of the code he was sent.

More likely, it’s how _ dark _ the flagship looks, and the dead-looking ships hanging in space around her. She’s supposed to be the home of all Ravagers, and looking at her now, Kraglin can’t help but feel dread. The way that the _ Cliffjumper _ is hanging behind her, looking as dead as the m-ships and smaller cargo vessels he can now make out around her ain’t helping.

He can see several other flagships, too- it looks like all the flame ships have already made it to the _ Starhawk _ ’s beacon; Charlie’s and Krugarr’s and Mainframe’s further from her than the _ Cliffjumper _ is. On a normal day, that would just be because she’s Aleta’s galleon, and even if the other three captains are points on the flame, there’s only two Ogords, and you don’t generally try to get between them.

But this isn’t a normal day.

Kraglin carefully gets through the field of what looks like ghost ships and finds that the old berth the _ Mollymauk _ rested in before he and Yondu had set off is still empty, and lands her there.

He’s met by a shaky and young looking ravager wearing the navy blue leathers of one from the first clan. Kraglin has to admit he’s confused by that, because usually there’d be someone from the bridge crew to greet him. He knows he’s been gone a long time and that it’s likely most of the fleet hasn’t yet _ really _ accepted the Ogord’s pardon, but…

And then he gets to the bridge and things start to slip into place.

Aleta is sitting in the captain’s chair, fingers white around the metal of a flame badge. She won’t look at him. The only other person in the darkened control center is Friskar, who’s been chef navigator longer than Kraglin’s worn a flame himself. 

She won’t look at him, and all she says is, “They’re dead.”

Everything goes sickly clear after that.

\---

Kraglin had to build the pyres for Stakar and Martinex himself, at least at first. Charlie’s ship had volunteered, their first mate still standing, and Kraglin could’ve hugged him and wept. 

As it stands, putting together the Admiral’s and the flame’s First Mate may well kill him regardless. 

He’d managed to get ten steps into Stakar’s study, find an old photo of the two Ogords, Marty, and Yondu, and broken down on the floor. Beyond that, there’s just no real place to _ start _ . Stakar was a man made mostly of relations to people and a massive hoard of knowledge. He spends several days just sitting at the table, looking around at the racks and racks of books and things Kraglin doesn’t have names for that Stakar picked up over years and years and _ centuries _ of collecting and wishes he could burn his own twisting and tangled emotions on the pyre rather than sit there for another minute. 

Half a standard week later, Aleta joins him at the table, and she shows him several locked drawers. They’re full of bits of yaka and chips of Pluvian diamond, feathers off birds and probably every little thing Aleta ever gave to him. A whole stack of data backups that’re just vids and images of the flame captains, things decades before his time and things he can actually remember being there for. One even has the recordings of his own wedding.

(The most recent is all collected feeds and rare images of Peter and the Guardians on Xandar.)

Martinex’s is somehow equally as bad, and easier. Marty’s cabin is actually well organized, and his relevant personal effects are crammed into bins under his bunk. They aren’t even locked. There are fewer memories in it, too- Kraglin hadn’t known the Pluvian all that well personally. Mostly they’d interacted with Yondu between them, more of an extension of friendship than a real tie. They’d got on well enough, but Marty was several decades his senior and had his own friends and stuck close to Stakar. 

They'd been almost friends themselves, before the exile, bonding over their captains being occasional idiots, and ship mods. Marty’d been there when he got married, and they’d messaged back and forth a few times when they’d split off after Yondu’s promotion to captain.

Then Martinex had cast his vote in with Stakar and the next time they'd spoke, it had been with Yondu's ashes still glittering outside the _ Quadrant _'s ports. There hadn’t been a lot of chance for them to get to know each other after that.

  


(He does one for Peter too. 

It takes several weeks, and he has to tear the better part of his ship apart to do it, but he manages it. He’d never realized how much space he’d let _ family _ and _ care _ creep into over the years. There’s years of Pete on the _ Mollymauk _, scuffs and scrapes where Peter dinged the m-ship during his first test flights that he never bothered to fix, just repaint. There’s snacks and weird little things he stuffed in corners and under panels. There’s Terran writing on the wings that Kraglin’s kept carefully legible for years. 

And now that space is empty.)

No one _ wants _ to do it. It’ll be admitting that they’re all gone and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. It’ll be defeat, and it’ll mean years of agony and restructuring and lots of folks promoted up into jobs they never wanted.

And Kraglin’s a case study for that- he’s gone from the only first mateship he’d ever wanted, to traitor, then near-but-refused Guardian, and now the acting right hand of the Ravager Admiral, the First Mate of the Flame itself while he tries to figure out where he fits. But he knows Aleta never wanted a promotion neither, and that helps a bit.

It’s going to mean improper rites, which is the last thing any Ravager wants, as they’re a superstitious bunch, but that’s the same reason it’s so important. They owe it to the dead to do what they can to see them off, and if that means Kraglin has to put pyres together for an old- if estranged- friend and equally old estranged father-in-law, then he’s got to do it. A bare handful of operating clans is just gonna have to be good enough to send them off. 

(He thinks that they’ll be forgiven for it. He simply prays that what they can muster will be enough, and that… Ogord can do the rest.)

\---

The first day after the ash has been carried away by the space winds, Kraglin joins Aleta on the bridge. There’s just Friskar and a few of the newly promoted officers, and they’re fair enoguh away that he feels comfortable enough trying to talk to her.

It ain’t easy. But it’s important. 

And somewhere, deep down, he figures the least he can do for Yondu’s ghost is try to help Aleta, since he went and failed on Pete.

“Look, I can't pretend to know exactly how you feel- you had Stakar and hell, even Marty way longer than I ever knew ‘em.” Kraglin sighs, running a hand down the fin, “But… I do know heartbreak.”

Aleta looks up at him, eyes narrowed. It’s a front, one Kraglin knows pretty well- because he’s spent the last few months doing it himself. Yondu had joked once that he and Aleta would get on, and he’s starting to realize why he thought that. She doesn’t say anything, but he knows he’s got her attention.

He swallows. “I know what it’s like to lose your other half. Your kid.” 

She’s still watching him.

“Well… you won't have to do it alone.” He puts his hand on her shoulder, and when she doesn't immediately shrug him off, lightly squeezes it. “I never thought I'd say it but… if you want me to step up, be first mate… I'll do it. I don't think Rox'd be too impressed, but it's what I can do.”

And then Aleta makes the first real expression he’s seen on her since they burned the pyres away, and she puts her hand over his and squeezes it. Her eyes are still sharp, but there’s a small light in there too, flickering.

The determination to not just roll over and die.

\---

  


“A-” Kraglin stops, forcing himself not to outwardly wince. They still haven’t figured out how to navigate addressing each other, yet. He can’t call her captain, because she isn’t one anymore and he knows he can’t make himself physically manage to call _ anyone _ that now. He can’t call her admiral- she hates it, and he can tell because every time someone says it she flinches. 

Most people wouldn’t notice it, but Kraglin wasn’t most people. He knew Aleta, and a lot of who was left was rookies that didn’t know the history of the fleet enough to know any better. Kraglin, though, did his rookie stint on the _ Starhawk _ two decades back now, and through merit of knowing Yondu had seen Aleta more than most others had.

But he can’t just call her _ Aleta _, and he sure as hell ain’t calling her Ogord.

So he just clears his throat to get her attention and figures they’ll figure it out as they get on.

She looks up from her congealing meal at him. “Yes, Obfonteri?”

“Final check-in was today.” He swallows rough before sitting next to her at the table. His nose wrinkles at the smell at the rations- they're disgusting, and made for a baseline mean of species needs. He can stomach them, but he doesn't know why Aleta's bothering- last he checked, she needed fish and anything else was purely for personal amusement.

But then, they were low on options. The fish that lived in the water lines and tank- cleaner fish that clung to the walls of the tanks and every so often got sucked into a filter that some poor unfortunate rookie had to dive in and go clean out- had disappeared. 

Kraglin could remember the first time one had been filter-ized when he was still a mechanic- the poor bastard who’d had to go scrub it out had said there were dozens on dozens of the fish sucker-suctioned to the walls, and that they had all been watching him. 

No one ever scrubbed the water filters more than once if they could help it.

“I see.” Aleta returns to staring at the grey mush. “How bad is it?”

“Out of ninety-nine clans, only forty-six have checked in. Of those forty-six, only forty-two have responded after first check in. And a further eight of those ships are running on less than skeleton.” Kraglin hands her the datapad, putting his head in his hands when she takes it. 

This time a few years ago, there'd been a hundred clans. Last year, ninety-nine.

Now there were fewer than fifty. The only good news is that they’ve finally received word from Mainframe. She’s alive, which is a massive relief to the fleet and especially to Aleta. It means she isn’t the only flame captain left.

Aleta hands the pad back and shoves the plate hard enough that it clatters to the floor on the other side of the table, and she leans to regard it with a neutral look. “Order the fleet to head to Haven, and anyone who can pick up the stragglers to do so.”

\---

They end up needing to abandon some of the remaining ships. It’s going to lower the clan numbers even farther, but crews either have to merge, take on a bunch of rookies, or sink at this point. 

And they’re gonna need rookies either way.

They leave the ships on Haven, the Ravager homeworld claimed long ago by the Ogords, creating a yard of ghost ships a ways away from the ravager compounds on the surface. 

After shifting nearly every roster in the fleet, Kraglin runs into a numbers problem with the flame flagships. Charlie’s crew is determined to stay with theirs, and the same goes for Krugarr, and Mainframe’s actually planning to semi-retire and stay on Haven. 

  
But that still leaves the _ Cliffjumper _ and the _ Starhawk. _

\---

“We need to talk about the _ Starhawk _. As it stands, she's just too big a ship to-”

“We aren't leaving her here.” Aleta snaps, whipping around to look at him with a fire in her eyes. It's the kind of look that had driven more than a few rookies off the _ Cliffjumper _ back in the day. She looks ready to 

“Woah, Aleta, I just meant-” Kraglin puts his hands up, hoping to show her he isn't going to argue with her and doesn't want to get into a fight. 

“I know. I know.” She slowly eases from the stiff, rigid posture she’d gone into. “I just… Kraglin, I can't leave her here. We'll move the crew from the _ Cliffjumper _, and just run the critical sectors.” Aleta turns from him and runs a hand along the hull walls.

Kraglin swallows, remembering with sudden clarity that the _ Starhawk _ is more than just a ship to Aleta. Sure, all ravagers had some respect or awe for the flagship, but for Aleta, this had been a home for her and Stakar. All the other flame captains had done spells aboard, and Marty hadn't ever left. Kraglin himself even started out here.

The _ Cliffjumper _ is a tool for Aleta. The _ Starhawk _ is as good as she's got to a home. 

He crosses the _Cliffjumper_ off the manifest.

\---

Looking across the catwalks of the _ Starhawk _ makes it clearer just how scattered and mixed up the crew is.

Yellow, orange, blue and green colors that’re bright, colors that aren’t- the only one he doesn’t see is the maroon red he wears himself. 

So Kraglin goes to see the tailor- one of the odd survivors of not only the destruction but the old days before Kraglin was aboard. They’re not going to replace the old uniforms, not completely, but they need a cohesion while still honoring where they’ve all come from.

Aleta comes in one day with a new flame. It’s a design with three raised flames, the rest flat; a bird’s face staring up from the dark base. 

Kraglin thinks he’s about to choke when he realizes one of those points is for _ him _.

\---

They get their first unknown transmission a couple months after what they’ve started calling That Day. A few hours of drifting towards it makes it no less corrupted by static, so everyone is tense and near hoping for some kind of conflict.

The fleet is managing pretty well, or at least what you could call pretty well considering. Most of their work now is moving shipments between the outer worlds: fuel, food, that sort of thing. They’ve got more than enough in the consolidated coffers to cover the smaller number of ships, and no one feels too much like, well, _ ravaging. _ It’s been quiet, and as the new habits of things set in, it’s starting to get quiet like humidity on a planet you aren’t used to where the air feels like it’s turning to soup in your lungs.

But it’s not a fight that they find.

Turns out the signal is coming from a small group of transport ships- ships that are partially damaged and out of fuel, and with no mechanics qualified to fix them even if they did have the power to keep flying. 

The _ Starhawk _ doesn’t have mechanics to spare, or fuel (money or not, they don’t exactly carry extra- it’s a _ massive _ hazard, especially with a smaller crew to keep an eye on things), and Aleta decides that they can’t just abandon them to die in the dark of space. So they set up a little zone in one of the lower disused areas and cordone the refugees there while they decide what to do about it.

“We can’t _ keep _ them- they’re civilians!” The bosun protests. Kraglin watches with a vague sense of pity- they haven’t learned yet to not argue with Aleta.

“What do you want us to do with them, then?” Aleta snaps back, drumming her fingers on her arm. It makes a _ clink clink scratch _ sound as the hardened material of her gloves hits against the armor plates, vaguely reminiscent of how Stakar always sounded like metal keys when he gestured. “We don’t exactly have many options. Xandar is _ gone _, in case you don’t remember.”

“But just Xandar.” Kraglin frowns, eyeing the console that holds the starcharts. He doesn’t realize he said it aloud until Aleta clears her throat. 

“And?” She’s watching him, hawkish and expectant. 

“Well, why don’t we take some of them to, say,” Kraglin pulls up the projector and flips through it until he finds the coordinates he’s looking for, “Regulus II?”

“Regulus II?” She comes over and leans over, studying the chart. 

“It’s in what _ was _ Nova space, and it’s out of the way.” He says, watching her as she thinks. Aleta isn’t entirely unlike Stakar, contrary to what some may think. They’re compliments, not opposites, and she can look just as curious and thoughtful when she’s focused on something. It’s just that she rarely lets people she doesn’t trust see it.

He isn't sure how to feel about being able to read her_ \- _ her _ letting _ him.

“Wasn’t it where Mar-” Aleta cuts off, eyes closing off and going dark. Kraglin winces.

“Yeah.” They still haven’t gotten to a point where anybody can manage to get through the names of the dead. The only time it had happened was when they’d done the rush of funerals. “But it’s probably our best bet right now.”

“Any of the larger worlds are likely to be too chaotic… And I don’t want to risk trying to land on a larger world and get shot down for being vultures.” Aleta nods. “Regulus II it is.”

\---

They’re about halfway to Regulus II when Kraglin encounters the kid.

He’s under the _ Mollymauk _ , replacing part of the navigations array in the belly of the m-ship, when he hears feet slowly walk up. They aren’t heavy enough to be Mainframe, who isn’t even on the _ Starhawk _, and Aleta wouldn’t make any sound and would stand there till he picked up on being watched.

Any of the lower crew would hesitantly clear their throats and call him “sir”, and any of the veterans would usually just say “Hey, Krags,” and say their piece.

Which means whoever is under him isn’t a ravager. 

He slides his tool into the roll he has laying on the inside of the _ Mollymauk _’s plating and shifts so that he can swing around and face whoever it is.

When he does, he freezes and stares.

There’s a kid standing below him on the catwalk that runs under the m-ship docks, looking up at him.

For a second, Kraglin sees Peter in him, staring up at him with a black eye and bloody nose after he’d gotten picked on by some of the crew (Crew who had gone suspiciously missing afterwards. No one had ever know what happened to them, though Kraglin knows a couple were stabbed and went out an airlock, and the other through one of the engine blocks.) He’d come to the hangar because he remembered where it was and had been planning to hide in Kraglin’s m-ship til one of the ravagers he knew came looking. 

  
When he’d seen Kraglin, though, he’d started whimpering and crying like the terran had done often when he was younger. The then- _ Eclector’s _ first mate had jumped down and managed to drag the whole story out of him, and had distracted him with a bag of some snacks he’d left in his m-ship after the last away mission while he went and took care of things.

It had been the next week that he’d started teaching Peter to hold a knife, which Yondu had laughed at him for when Peter got the brilliant idea to take one of Kraglin’s knives. He’d thought it had been Horuz. And hadn’t _ that _ been a fun brawl that ended in both of them scrubbing the bogs.

Kraglin blinks again and it’s just a Xandarian brat, but the vice-like squeeze around his heart remains. 

“Got lost?” He asks, jumping down onto the catwalk and suppressing a grimace as his knee complains. 

He’d expected the kid to dart off, or at least back up when he got close, but he doesn’t, still watching him.

Kraglin isn’t sure what to do about it, honestly. If the kid isn’t gonna run off, then Kraglin should probably get him out of the hangar. It’s not exactly a safe place for a kid who isn’t growing up Ravager-style.

A memory of sitting in the mess when it was quiet with Yondu after the exile comes to mind. That was the same kind of feeling of loss and being adrift that he’s feeling now. He'd done the same for Pete too, after his first mission gone wrong where he saw one of the crew who actually got on with him die.

Kraglin may as well be impulsive as he gets older.

“Thirsty?” 

The kid seems surprised and then nods.

"Then let's fix that." 

The walk to the mess is a quiet one, Kraglin focusing on getting there and the kid eyeing the lifts and halls as they go. When they get there, he sits the kid down at a table and gets into the galley. He spots a beaten up tea tin- Marty's, which means it's safe, because no one in their right mind would consider crossing him or Stakar- and runs the water.

Back at the table, tray covered in mugs and the old metal brewer in hand, he sits down across from the kid.

“Why are you helping us?” The question is shaky and quiet, but the kid looks up at him with intensity in his eyes.

Kraglin takes a sniff of the tea and is hit by a memory of sitting with Marty at a viewport, watching the stars go by and joking about dumb shit. It’d been one of the few interactions he’d really had with him. It was funny how he felt more like they _ had _ been friends, and that Kraglin had just missed it, the further away they got.

He shakes it off. “We’re ravagers, not Kree.” It’s something Yondu used to say, something he knows came from Stakar and Aleta. There are likely decent Kree, sure, but there sure ain’t Kree of any blood in the fleet, or in any of their hearts. “We aren’t gonna just leave civilians out to die like that. And at this point… Kinda pointless to try and extort ya.” He grins, passing a mug to the kid.

  
It works, and the kid snorts and takes it. Morbid had always worked on Peter, too.

(It’s true, though, that it’s pointless to try and get anything out of the civilians. For one thing, that’s a level of thievery that even he can’t stomach, and for another, the whole galaxy is too fucked up to even think about doing what they’d always done. 

Before, when there were a hundred clans, they would have needed to be concerned about the _ Starhawk _ ’s accounts. Being the flagship meant that the _ Starhawk _ not only had to take care of herself, but any of the other clans that fell behind. It was part of why being exiled was brutal- you not only lost access to allies and ravager space, if you had something like an engine go down, you paid for it.

Now that they’ve evened out at about twenty-nine, after clan mergers and several dozen retirements, they all have more than enough to cover their own, even with the fluctuating prices across the galaxy. It’s kind-of pointless to carry how they did before, anyway. Hence the supply runs.)

“I guess.” The boy takes a sip of the tea and looks at him curiously. “I didn’t think ravagers would _ drink _ tea.”

Kraglin shrugs. “_ I _ don’t.” He eyes the mug, shaking his head. “But this stuff belonged to… well, a friend.” 

Some small part of him still thinks that just _ maybe _ , if he fucks around with Marty’s stuff, the pluvian will come screeching around a corner and tell him to stop it, because Kraglin has his own damn drinks, and he doesn’t have the time to get more tea when he’s constantly babysitting half the fleet _ and _ Stakar-

But it never happens, so Kraglin just drinks the tea.

“What’s your name, kid?” He watches the Xandarian.   


That’s another thing, too, that he’d never really have expected- him being friendly with actual Nova-aligned Xandarians. Other ravagers was one thing; hell, so was when they’d even sided with the Nova when Ronan had gone for the power stone.

Sitting on the ravager flagship, sitting in Marty’s job and drinking the pluvian’s tea, all while having a civil discussion with a Xandarian kid… 

The galaxy really had changed. 

“Richard. Richard Rider.” He says, looking down at his own mug.

Were it a different time, he’d tell him to be more careful about using his full name with _ pirates _. Silly as Pete’s nickname sounded when the terran was a kid, it had been much safer to call him that when they were off-ship. Even “Quill” had been risky, depending on how close they were to places they knew Ego had visited. But given the way the kid looks, he has a suspicion that his full name may be the last thing he has of home. 

(They’re all orphans in the extended clan of Ogord- Aleta by choice, Kraglin by happenstance, Mainframe by complicated reasons relating to her being a sentient but non-organic being. Stakar had been orphaned too, Martinex and Charlie, and Yondu, and Peter. 

He suspects that now, a good chunk of everyone is.)

“Kraglin Obfonteri.” He taps at the flame on his shoulder. “Ravager, obviously, so don’t go telling people.”

Richard laughs this time, and Kraglin feels a bit of the weight give. “Sure.”

\---

When they’ve finally made it to Regulus, it’s pretty easy to tell the first settlement they find the situation and get clearance to land and let the refugees disperse.

Most of the Xandarians leave the ship quickly, even if they’re grateful, because it’s the first planet they’ve seen since fleeing their home world. The natives and few visitors have put out a kind of greeting party too.

They are all grieved, but finding anyone at this point is cause for a celebration, even if you don’t know them.

Kraglin and Aleta watch from one of the transport ship’s lower decks- the _ Starhawk _ is still up in orbit. One of the clans with a smaller ship is sitting on the ground next to them, but the flagship and several of the other vessels in the fleet are too bulky to really navigate down outside of emergency situations. The one they’re in now is a _ bit _ like the _ Quadrant _had been, bordering on difficult to wrangle but fine when there isn’t a crisis going on.

Looking out the viewport, it's hard to imagine Martinex growing up here. It's a sort of grassy, brown world, accented with rocks in exclusively neutral tone grey. Martinex was a man made of solid, organic diamond who was an expert in handling people, not plants.

It's easy to imagine, though, why he was keen to leave it.

Boots come up the deck behind them, and Kraglin turns, expecting to see one of the crew coming to let them know that the Xandarians have disembarked and they can leave Regulus and the phantoms it’s conjuring up for them behind.

Instead, it’s Richard Rider, clutching at his bag and looking nervous. 

Kraglin frowns, turning to face him. “Hey kid, what’re you still doing here? I thought you’d have been off already.”

“I-” Richard chews on his lip, before he says, “I was wondering if I could stay?”

“What?” Kraglin hadn’t been expecting that. He can see Aleta out of the corner of his eye, and while she’s still watching out the viewport, he saw the subtle shift in her posture that meant that wasn’t what she was actually paying attention to.

“Well- you need recruits, and I thought maybe I could be one.” The teen says, twisting his bag in his hands. 

“Kid, you- you need to _ go _, you need to be with your people.” Kraglin won’t insult him and say family, but he can remember Pete, and as much as he loves that idiot, he knows that in the grand moral scheme of it, the brat ought to have grown up with other terrans, just like Yondu should’ve grown up with Centaurians.

But Kraglin has forgotten that he isn't exactly a moral person, because when Richard's expression falls and he remembers again that “Rider” is the only thing that he has of his family, and well, didn't Marty always say Regulus was a shithole of a planet?

“But… I guess you're old enough to decide if you want to stay.” Kraglin sighs, scratching at his stubble. He hears Aleta stifling a laugh next to him. It's the first thing like it he's heard from her in months. 

“Then I can stay? Really?” The kid beams, bouncing a little on his heels.

“Yeah, you can stay. ‘S long as the boss says it's alright.” He glares at her, and Aleta grins at him.

“I say kid's got the right stuff.” The admiral declares, turning around to give Richard a nod. “I'd be happy to take you on, Rider.” 

And that's that.

\--- 

“Hey, Kraglin? Can I tell you something?” Richard looks nervous.

The Hraxian looks over from the display he’s working on. “Sure. What's up?”

“It's just… I need to tell you something. I haven't been entirely honest.” The kid is shifting and won't look him in the eyes.

Kraglin frowns but shuts the display down and leans against the console. “Alright kid, what's up?” 

When Richard doesn't answer, Kraglin realizes he was coming off a little tough- he has been a little stressed lately. And given the way Richard is talking, this probably gonna be something like ‘I scratched one of the m-ships’. So he softens his posture and gives the teen a thin smile. “I promise, Rich, I ain't gonna get mad at you.”

.

“I'm not- I'm not a Xandarian.” Richard says, looking up at him. “I'm from Terra.” 

Oh gods, celestials, and by Ogord- the kid really _ is _ like Peter.

Kraglin is too stunned by that to respond, staring at Richard, and the kid - _ terran _ , _ terran kid _ \- stammers on.

“It's just- I don't really _ remember _Terra that well. I got picked up young- a Nova patrol checking things out for the blockade.” Richard looks borderline desperate now, like he thinks Kraglin is going to get mad at him, and like he doesn't know what to do if he stops talking. “I- my parents were gone, and my mom just- adopted me. Ma always joked that she always got onto her for bringing in strays and then she brought in me.”

Kraglin manages something like a grin and says, “Well, you fit right in, then.” 

And isn’t it all a grand joke, a ship headed by an Arcturian, a Hraxian, and a Terran, three of the rarest species among the stars, but ones that always seem to gravitate back like magnets.

\---

Richard is so like Pete and so unlike Pete that it's almost funny.

Richard had grown up on Xandar, can barely say his name and ask directions in Terran, and the first time Kraglin boots up the clones of Pete’s music off the _ Mollymauk _ the kid looks about as confused as anybody else on the bridge. 

Turns out he likes it, though. A couple weeks in, and Richard is humming along.

But he doesn’t know when to back down from a fight, or from anything really. The first couple weeks Rider’s on the _ Starhawk _, it’s pretty much guaranteed that any spat will have him in the middle of it. He follows Aleta around and tries to copy how she moves, and when she catches on and gets sick of it, growling at him and blocking him with glowing walls, starts following Kraglin instead.

Kraglin, who was used to having a Terran dogging him for several years, works around him and compartmentalizes the times Rider gets on his nerves away. It’s actually… almost nice to have an over-eager teenager around again. As much as he’d hated Peter’s attitude, it’s a good distraction, and Richard’s got less baggage with the Ravagers. He knows Aleta doesn’t really mind him that much either, but she needs her space and is far more stressed than she’d ever been when she’d had rookies following her before.

There are some benefits to it, too. Richard doesn't have any of the history he and Aleta have, which means when he decides to let out some of his tension by joking, he doesn't get piercing looks. 

"It's nice to back in a position where I can trust people to know simple math." 

Aleta would've been concerned. Richard, though, snorts and makes a crack back about knowing a couple pilots who were so used to automated sims they couldn't fly a real ship.

There’s still a gaping hole in his chest where Pete goes, but maybe, just _ maybe _, he’s got the heart to keep Richard around and patch things up with Aleta.

  
And so they all get on. A year passes, and they gather around the viewports and break years of tradition and superstition by lighting the stars with the _ Starhawk _’s colors, Aleta and Kraglin and Richard.

**Author's Note:**

> also i apologize for the spacing on this chapter i will make it less Big when it's not 1am in the morning haha! :p


End file.
